


A Preponderance of the Evidence: Prelim

by kateyes224



Series: A Preponderance of the Evidence [3]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s04e14 Memento Mori, F/M, Post-Episode: s04e13 Never Again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 05:31:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10074371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kateyes224/pseuds/kateyes224
Summary: Mulder and Scully are forced to deal with the aftermath of the Ed Jerse case while Scully also battles cancer.





	

Mulder tosses and turns as minutes trickle into hours, entertaining himself by memorizing the way shadows dip and swirl across the ceiling to the sound of traffic gradually overtaking the steady metronome of Scully’s breathing.  He kicks the sheets off at one point, frustrated when they cling to his legs with a crackle of electricity, his body still charged with the current of all the things he hasn’t said.  

Morning finally comes.  

The late winter storm has retreated overnight, leaving the sun and blue sky to glare into the room as if demanding the two of them acknowledge that day has dawned.  They’ve ended up facing one another on their respective beds, and Mulder is watching Scully’s face when her eyes snap open seconds before the alarm goes off.  He sees her focus as the haze of sleep retreats, and doesn’t bother to look away when she finds him staring at her.  

Slipping past one another in the bathroom and their room, they’re comfortable enough with the dance of the other’s morning routine that they don’t even need to speak.  Mulder shaves while Scully showers; Scully leaves the water running when she steps out with a towel wrapped securely around her body.  She finds that Mulder has wiped the fog away from the mirror in a perfect circle where she can stand to apply her makeup; Mulder discovers that Scully has hung his suit and tie from a hook on the back of the bathroom door.

They catch a cab to the courthouse and arrive almost half an hour before they’re supposed to meet with ADA Venegas.  At a small coffee cart out front, Mulder buys them both coffees and wordlessly hands a banana nut muffin to Scully.  He frets until she rolls her eyes and eventually nibbles the top off before handing him the rest.

They’re sitting outside a long row of courtrooms when Scully makes eye contact with a young woman in an impeccably tailored grey skirt-suit who’s speaking animatedly to a uniformed police officer.  The woman nods at them, and they both stand.

“Agent Scully?”  

Clicking her way towards them in towering high heels, the petite brunette smiles and extends her hand.  She’s even shorter than Scully by a good two inches, although her shoes bring them almost eye-to-eye.  

“I’m ADA Regina Flores-Venegas.  Thanks so much for coming down on such short notice.”

Scully nods and takes Venegas’s hand, shaking it firmly.  “This is my partner, Fox Mulder.”

Venegas looks up at Mulder and her lips quirk into a bashful smile.

“Ah, Agent Mulder.  Nice to finally meet you.  Sorry for being so curt with you on the phone the other day.  I was…a little stressed out.”  She shrugs and holds her hand out to him.

Mulder grasps it and narrows his eyes, frowning at her.  “Not a problem, I understand.  If you could get Agent Scully on the stand first thing, we’d really appreciate it.  She has a doctor’s appointment back in Washington this afternoon.”

Venegas looks back to Scully, curiosity flashing in her eyes as they study one another.  “No problem.  I can call you out of order and get you up on the stand first thing.  Have you had a chance to review your report?”

Nodding, Scully sips her coffee and waves a few stapled sheets of paper up as proof.  “Yes, I have.  I’m good to go.”

Venegas glances over her shoulder as the bailiff steps out of their courtroom and catches her eye, motioning to her.  “Great.  That’s me.  Just have a seat in the hallway where I’ll be sure to see you, and I’ll have you in and out of here in a jiffy.  You’re free to go once you’re done with your testimony.”  Tilting her head in close to Scully, she lowers her voice so that Mulder has to crane his neck to hear over the din of the hallway.  “And Dana, remember what we talked about on the phone.  Expect some pretty…intimate questions from defense.  I’ll be doing my best to make sure they don’t overstep their bounds.”

With a toss of her long, wavy brown hair over her shoulder, Venegas clips away and disappears into the courtroom.

Scully sinks back down onto one of the benches that line the hallway.  “Jesus, I forget how nervous this part makes me,” she mutters.

“No need to be nervous,” Mulder says, sitting down next to her even closer than he usually would, leaning in so that he can feel the heat radiating from her.  Draping an arm behind her, he lets his thumb swipe a few circles on her shoulder blade.  “You’ve testified for prelims before.  And you’ve got your report there if you need it.”

“It’s not the testimony I’m worried about, Mulder.”  In the bustling courtroom hallway, Scully’s eyes look everywhere but at him.  “I haven’t seen _him_ , not since…” She trails off and stares down at her hands as she starts to fold her report into smaller and smaller squares.

Mulder swallows a tennis-ball-sized lump in his throat and unconsciously tightens his arm around her.  That’s what she’s nervous about.  She hasn’t seen Jerse since the line-up at the police station, when she’d identified him as both her attacker and her one-night stand.   _Yes, that’s the man who took me home and fucked me.  Yes, that’s the man who tried to kill me._  

Jealousy and wrath burn like wildfire in his chest as he stares at her, unfiltered light streaming in through the windows from behind them to set her profile aglow. Mulder quashes the urge to shake her, to scream at her, to demand answers from her.  He wants to tell her that whatever happened the night before Jerse tried to kill her doesn’t matter; but he’s not sure if he means that it doesn’t matter to him, or that it doesn’t matter to the court for the purposes of a preliminary hearing.  He thinks he’d be willing to lie to her, either way.

But he’s only able to get out a strangled, “Scully, I-” before Venegas pokes her head out of the courtroom and beckons Scully in.

Scully stands and straightens her suit jacket.  With one brief, searing look back at him over her shoulder, she’s inside the courtroom with Venegas following close behind as the door eases shut behind them.

Mulder stands and rakes a hand through his hair, pacing in a tight circle before he strides towards the door and grabs the handle just before it closes completely.  

Slipping quietly inside, he surveys the courtroom and settles himself in the back row of the gallery.

“The People call Special Agent Dana Scully to the stand.”

Venegas is standing just behind Scully where the bailiff has stopped them at the bar’s swinging door.  The clerk asks her to raise her right hand and swear an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her God.  As if she could ever do anything else.  Scully is nothing if not brutally, wonderfully honest.  

“I do,” comes Scully’s response, clear as a church bell on a cold winter morning.

Rounding the defense table, Scully climbs the low stairs to the witness stand beside the magistrate and eases herself into the chair.  She casts one quick glance around the courtroom, assessing her surroundings, before her eyes find Mulder’s, and her tongue darts out quickly to trace the edge of her upper lip before it disappears.  It’s a tell he recognizes.  

Scully adjusts the microphone down with a harsh squeal and looks directly at Venegas.  She has not once looked at Jerse, who Mulder notices has been staring intently at Scully since she walked in.  

The court clerk clears her throat and drones, “Please state your full name and spell it for the record.”

“Dana Katherine Scully, D-A-N-A K-A-T-” Scully spells, her voice unwavering.  “-U-L-L-Y,” she finishes.  She turns her head from the clerk to Venegas.  

Venegas takes her time flipping through a couple of pages in her binder, and the deliberate pause allows Scully to take a few deep breaths before Venegas looks up from the podium and throws a quick, encouraging smile at Scully.  Scully, remaining stoic, simply blinks back in response.

“Ms. Scully, please tell the Court what you do for a living.”

“I’m a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“And how long have you been a Special Agent?”

“About five and a half years.”

“What kind of training do you undertake to become a Special Agent?”

“I attended a 16-week training course at Quantico, Virginia, that included classes in preservation of evidence, self-defense, forensics, behavioral science, and procedural criminal investigation.”

“And are you required to maintain certifications in these various areas of expertise?”

“Yes.  Periodically we are required by the Department of Justice to attend classes that keep us abreast of changes in the law, department-wide procedural changes we need to be made aware of, advances in technology, and then those courses that are required to keep all of our certifications up to date.”

Venegas nods, adjusting her glasses.  “And do you hold any other degrees or certifications that the FBI does not deem to be a requirement or necessity?”

“Yes.  I’m a medical doctor.  I completed my degree in medicine at Stanford University and was recruited by the FBI just after I completed my residency and fellowship in anatomic and clinical pathology at Johns Hopkins.  I am also a board-certified forensic pathologist.”

“And how does a forensic pathologist end up working for the Department of Justice as a special agent?”

“I was recruited by the FBI just as I was completing my fellowship.  I found that I had a…” she breaks off and her blue-green eyes flash over to Jerse for a split-second before she juts her chin back to Venegas, “…a passion for criminal justice.  I felt I could distinguish myself there while serving my country.”

Venegas smiles serenely, nodding along.  “Fair to say you wanted to make a difference?  Help put the bad guys away?”

Mulder’s eyes slide over to Jerse’s defense attorney, a bearded, grizzled hulk of a man with a gleaming shock of blue-black hair, who is hunched over his legal pad furiously scribbling.

“Yes,” Scully answers.  “That’s fair to say.”

“And where are you currently assigned in your capacity as a Special Agent?”

“To a division of the FBI’s Violent Crimes Unit called the X-Files.  My partner and I investigate cases that have been deemed by the Bureau to be unexplainable, or that may have a paranormal element.”

At that, the defense attorney stops scritching on his legal pad.  He glances up at Scully and seems to study her for a long moment before he lowers his head and goes back to writing.

Venegas marches on.

“Agent Scully, I want to draw your attention to February 26, 1997.  Where were you on that day?”

“I had been asked by the supervising agent in my division, my partner, Special Agent Fox Mulder, to pursue a lead in an open investigation here in Philadelphia.”

“And did you pursue that lead?”

“I did.”

“And where did that lead take you?”  

“To a small neighborhood in the Little Russia area of the city, northeast Philadelphia,” Scully replies.  

“And what type of lead were you pursuing?”

Scully glances up at Mulder for the first time since she’s taken the stand, a questioning look in her eyes.  He shakes his head almost imperceptibly.  

“I’m not at liberty to reveal that information as the investigation is still ongoing.”

Venegas flips a page of her binder.  The defense attorney keeps writing.

“And on February 26, where did you find yourself?”

“On the northeast side of the city, in Bustleton.  I was staking out the lead that my partner had requested I follow up on when I saw my mark enter a small convenience store on Hendrix Street, just east of Barlow.”

“And what did you do next?”

“I followed him into the convenience store, where he stayed for only a moment or two.  I observed him speaking Russian to a woman I believed to be the shop owner before he left and crossed the street into a tattoo parlor.”

“Do you recall the name of the tattoo parlor?”

Scully’s brow creases for a moment before she answers.  “I believe it was Svo’s.”

“And then what happened?”

“I followed him from the convenience store into the tattoo parlor, but at that point I’d lost my visual on the lead.”

“You didn’t see where he’d gone?”

Scully shakes her head.  “No.  At that point, I knew he had entered the tattoo parlor and that he hadn’t exited through the front door because I’d been able to maintain a visual on the front door the entire time.  But I didn’t know whether he had escaped through the rear of the shop or through some other exit.”

Venegas nods and checks off a few things from her binder.  “So you entered the tattoo parlor.  Then what happened?”

“I went in and didn’t see the man I’d been tailing right away, but I did encounter a white male, mid-30s, engaged in a discussion with a man who appeared to work at the tattoo parlor.  The white male was complaining about a tattoo he’d gotten there recently.”

“And do you see that man here in court today?”

Scully closes her eyes, takes a slow, deep breath, and as she exhales she looks briefly over at the defense table.  “I do.”

“Can you describe where he’s sitting and an article of clothing that he’s wearing?” Venegas asks gently.

“He’s seated at the defense table and he’s wearing an orange jumpsuit,” Scully says, her voice wavering almost imperceptibly.

“May the record reflect that the witness has identified the defendant?” Venegas asks, looking up at the magistrate, who nods before intoning, “The record shall so reflect.”

“Agent Scully, you said the defendant was complaining about a tattoo he’d gotten recently?”

“Yes, he was arguing with someone who appeared to be an owner or manager of the tattoo parlor, I’m not sure which.”

“What was the nature of the argument?”

“I’m not sure exactly.  I wasn’t paying complete attention to the argument, as I was still looking around the shop for the person of interest I’d been tailing.  It wasn’t until I was brought into the conversation that I started to pay any attention to it.”

“How were you brought into the conversation?”

“The owner, or manager, I believe his name was Svo, asked my opinion about the quality of the artwork of defendant’s tattoo.”

“And what did you say?”

Scully finally looks over at Jerse, who is still studying her intently, before answering a moment later.  “I said I thought that it was beautiful.”  Mulder glances back and forth between Scully and Jerse, a cold sweat ripping through him the longer the two maintain eye contact.

Venegas clears her throat slightly, then asks, “And then what happened?”

Scully seems to remember herself and closes her eyes again, shaking her head slightly.  “At some point, I saw my lead open a door at the rear of the tattoo parlor and catch the owner’s attention.  The owner left the defendant and I on our own in the shop and we struck up a conversation that eventually led to him asking me out to dinner.”  The skin on Scully’s chest starts to flush scarlet and the color creeps its way up her neck until it stains her cheeks.  

Mulder chews on his bottom lip and looks over at Jerse, who has sunk down in his chair.  

Venegas flips to the next page of her binder and starts thumbing through some photos.  “And what did you say?”

“Since I didn’t know if my lead was still within earshot and I didn’t want to blow my cover, I told the defendant I was visiting an aunt but that I was supposed to leave town that night.”

“So you declined his invitation for dinner?”

“Yes, initially.”

Mulder closes his eyes and exhales heavily through his nose.  

“But you did end up going out to dinner with the defendant that night, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell us how that came about?”

Scully clears her throat.  Her voice has dropped an octave when she answers.  “Mr. Jerse had given me his number.  Since he seemed like a nice enough guy, when I was back at my hotel room that night and I’d had a chance to think it over and reflect on my encounter with him, I decided to take him up on his offer.”

Venegas taps her pen against the podium to punctuate her next question.  “And why did you do that, Agent Scully?”

Scully’s eyes lift from Venegas to Mulder, and she holds his gaze as she answers.  Each word slices through him like he’s being flayed wide open and disemboweled on one of her autopsy tables.  “It had been a long time since someone had seen me as anything more than a badge and a gun.”

Mulder’s eyes slide shut, breaking contact momentarily with Scully.  They’d always managed to have entire conversations, arguments, theories bandied about and shot down, with their eyes.  Today, he reminds himself, he needs to hear what she has to say.  All of it.  Even if it hurts.

“So you agreed to go out to dinner with someone you’d just met, someone who seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be normal, correct?”

“He did appear to be a perfectly normal, nice man, yes.”

“Did he appear to you, when you first met him, to be suffering from any auditory or visual hallucinations?”

“No, he did not.”

Venegas nods and checks something off in her binder.

“Then what happened?”

“I called Mr. Jerse later that night and told him that I’d changed my mind, and that I would like to go out to dinner with him.  And I believe he said his car was being worked on, so I told him I’d pick him up from his apartment.”

“And did you pick him up?”

“Yes.  He invited me in, as he wasn’t quite ready to go yet, and said something about having made dinner reservations somewhere.  I noticed that he was bleeding through his shirt near the area of the tattoo I’d seen earlier that day.  I asked to take a look at it to be sure it wasn’t infected.”

The defense attorney’s head jerks up and he takes a hard look at Scully before he scribbles something on his notepad.

Venegas crosses her arms and starts pacing behind her podium.  “Did you make it to dinner, Agent Scully?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Scully again looks directly at Mulder when she answers.  “I asked the defendant to take me out for drinks instead.  At a bar across the street from the tattoo parlor where we had met earlier.  I believe it was called The Hard Eight.”

“And why did you decide to go out for drinks instead of dinner?”

Scully licks her lips and shrugs slightly.  “I don’t know.  I guess part of me was thinking it would be easier to get out of drinks than dinner if it ended up being awkward.”

“So you went to the bar.  How much did you have to drink?” Venegas asks.  She had told Scully over the phone that she was going to ask this question in order to, as she put it, ‘jump on that grenade before defense has a chance to blow us up with it.’

Scully swallows and ducks her head, staring at her folded hands.  “At least three.”

“Do you usually drink alcohol while you’re actively investigating a case, Agent Scully?”

Scully bristles, but just barely; Mulder reads it in the subtle way she straightens her shoulders and lifts her chin a bit higher.

“I was no longer actively investigating a case.  When I’d returned to the Philadelphia field office on the evening of February 26, I’d handed the case off to another agent, effectively turning it over to them for further investigation as they saw fit.  I’d notified my partner over the phone that the case agency had been transferred, and that I was officially off the case.  I was just awaiting a flight out the next morning.”

“So you weren’t violating any internal policies and procedures when you agreed to go out on a date with the defendant and have a couple of drinks with him?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Okay, so you had a couple of drinks with the defendant.  What did you talk about?”

Scully shifts in her seat and a pained look crosses her face, like she’s suddenly discovered a pine cone underneath her rear end and she needs to sit comfortably in spite of it.

“I don’t- I don’t recall the specifics.  I remember making small talk, about the bar we were at, how he’d come to find it.  And about how…” her brow furrows, “about how I felt like I was caught in a circle…”

Mulder’s heart starts to thud in his chest.  Caught in a circle?  

“At some point,” Venegas interrupts, jarring Scully from what she was remembering, and Mulder curses under his breath, “did you and Mr. Jerse decide to leave the bar?”

“Yes.  We got to talking about his tattoo.  I noticed that it had started to bleed again, so I asked him if I could take a look at it, and he, uh…he d-declined.”  Scully’s eyes drop to her hands clasped in her lap.  

Mulder’s ears perk up at the slight stumble and her sudden lack of eye contact, and he notices that Venegas also leans forward on her podium, sensing something more that Scully wants to say.  Mulder watches Venegas watching Scully.  She’s incredibly perceptive, reading Scully’s cues almost as well as he’s able to.

“What do you mean he ‘declined’?” Venegas presses.

Scully licks her lips and continues to stare down at her hands as she fidgets with them.  “The same way when I had asked to see his tattoo back at his apartment, thinking it was possibly infected or not healing properly, he brushed me off.  This time, when I asked, I, um…I tried to roll his sleeve up to see it for myself, and he, uh, grabbed me.”

Mulder feels his temperature start to rise, and he unbuttons the first button of his dress shirt and loosens his tie as he glares at the back of Jerse’s head.  Jerse stares down at the table in front of him.

“He grabbed you?” Venegas asks.

“He was trying to stop me from touching the tattoo,” Scully explains quickly.  “I don’t know if it was painful, or if he just didn’t want me to see it, but he grabbed my hands to keep me from touching it.”

“Agent Scully,” Venegas starts to pace again, “was this a violent grab?”

“Objection, your Honor,” Jerse’s attorney speaks for the first time, and his voice is deep and mellifluous, tinged with a genteel Southern accent.  “As far as I’m aware, as pertains to Agent Scully, my client is only being charged with the one count of assault and one count of attempted murder, and I’m not sure what Counsel is trying to get at here.”

Venegas whirls and faces the magistrate.  “Your Honor, if Agent Scully was assaulted not once, but twice, then I’m perfectly willing to amend the charges if necessary.”

The magistrate looks back at Jerse’s attorney for a response, who shrugs.  “Overruled.  You may answer, Agent Scully.”

Scully contemplates her answer carefully before responding.  “It was forceful, yes.  But not violent.”

Venegas pauses and turns towards her again.  “Did you fear for your safety when he grabbed your hands?”

Scully stares at Venegas.  “Uh…n-no.  Not at that time.”

“Why not?”

“He, uhm…he didn’t appear to me to be dangerous at that time.  I just thought that maybe he didn’t want me to touch the wound.  That it was tender or inflamed, and maybe I’d unintentionally hurt him when I’d touched it.”

Venegas’s lips purse and she’s silent for a long moment before she nods, appearing to be satisfied.  “So what happened next?”

Scully speaks down into her lap, so that Mulder has to strain to hear her.  “He said if I was so curious about his tattoo that I should get my own.”

Venegas perches once again over the podium on her elbows, leaning towards Scully.  “Did you have any tattoos at that time, Agent Scully?”

“No.”  

“Do you now?”

Scully swallows hard.  “Yes.”

“Did you get a tattoo that night?”

“Yes.  We went across the street to the tattoo parlor where we’d first met.”

“Did the defendant convince you to get a tattoo?”

“No, he did not.  It was my decision.”

“How long did the process of getting the tattoo take?”

“About an hour.”

“What happened after you got the tattoo?”

“We went back to the defendant’s apartment.”

“Did you keep drinking once you got back to his apartment?”

“No.”

Boring twin holes in the back of Jerse’s head with his eyes, Mulder leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees, steepling his fingers over his mouth.

“But were you still feeling the effects of the alcohol, Agent Scully?”

“Yes.”

“Did the defendant ask you to spend the night?”

“He offered for me to spend the night.  The weather was especially bad that evening, and he said he’d feel better if I stayed there, and that he would sleep on his couch.”  

_Yeah, I’ll just best that would make you feel better, you sonofabitch_ , Mulder thinks venomously at Jerse.

Venegas has started pacing behind her podium again.  “And did you spend the night at the defendant’s apartment?”

Scully lifts her head and looks directly at Jerse, who is staring intently at the table in front of him.  Mulder’s breathing has become shallow, like he’s sucking oxygen through a straw instead of his nose.

“Yes.”

“Agent Scully, did you have sex with the defendant that night?”

_Oh, God_.  

Scully’s chest rises and falls slowly, once, twice, as she breathes deeply through her nose, her gaze shifting from Venegas to Jerse to Mulder.  Mulder finds that he can’t blink.  He can’t think.  He can barely breathe.  

_It doesn’t matter_ , Mulder reminds himself.  Whatever she did with Jerse that night, whatever her motivations, it was her choice.  It’s her life.  She doesn’t owe him any answers.  Not now.  Not ever.  He needs to tell her now, needs her to know that whatever happened with Jerse that night, it doesn’t matter.  And they’ve always been more fluent in body language, always been able to convey more with their eyes than their words.  

Without breaking eye contact with Scully, Mulder rises from his seat and sidesteps his way across the row of seats towards the door.  Scully’s brow furrows slightly in confusion, and her lips part as if she wants to say something, to stop him from going anywhere.   _It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, I love you, it doesn’t matter,_ he telegraphs to her on an endless loop, praying she understands.  

And now that he’s seen the man in the flesh, been in the same room with both Scully and Jerse, Mulder realizes that he truly doesn’t care what happened between them.  All that matters is that she’s alive.  He needs her to know that whatever the answer to this question is, he loves her, regardless.

The reality of it hits him like a ton of bricks.

He loves her.  

Regardless.

His hand is just touching the cool wood of the door of the courtroom, a whoosh of air sliding past him as the door cracks open to ruffle his hair and whip at his tie, when her answer comes.

“No.”

Scully’s strong, clear voice stops him, and he turns to find her looking directly at him.  

Venegas flips a page in her binder.  The defense attorney keeps scribbling on his notepad.  The bailiff whispers into the phone at his desk.  The court reporter types away on her stenograph.  

But Scully just keeps looking at him, and the rest of the courtroom fades into the background as Mulder stares back at her.  She shrugs almost imperceptibly and for a fraction of a second, the ghost of a smile washes over her face before it disappears.

“Why not, Agent Scully?” Venegas’s voice brings the two of them back to the present.

“I think we had both had a little bit too much to drink,” Scully answers slowly, and she turns to face Venegas again, her demeanor and inflection switching easily into clinical doctor mode.  “We weren’t able to have intercourse that night because the defendant wasn’t able to sustain an erection.”

If it’s possible, Jerse slumps even lower into his seat and covers his eyes with one handcuffed hand.  

Scully glances at Jerse for a brief moment before she lifts her eyes again to Mulder’s.  He hasn’t moved, hasn’t stopped staring at her since all of his air left his lungs.  

xxxxx

Venegas finishes her line of questioning over the next hour, painstakingly going over the events that unfolded the morning after Scully’s date and failed sexual encounter; how Scully learned from detectives that knocked on Jerse’s door that his neighbor had gone missing and two separate blood samples had been collected; how one of the samples yielded an abnormality that she’d been able to determine from the toxicology report was ergot, a parasite that potentially caused auditory hallucinations; how she’d confronted Ed with this information when he’d returned with breakfast before he’d assaulted her and wrapped her in the same sheets they’d been tangled in the night before and almost thrown into an incinerator; how Jerse had roasted his arm.  

Scully testifies with conviction and doesn’t even have to look at her report when asked about the minutiae of the case.

Mulder is even more impressed with Venegas.  She’s precise and thoughtful in her questioning, skillfully skirting the potential pitfalls of Scully’s testimony to build her case against Jerse.  What’s more, Venegas is able to read Scully like she’s an open book, sensing when Scully is willing to say more but needing time to formulate her answers.  Mulder has to hand it to the fiery prosecutor.  She’s good.  

But the morning is far from over.  

After a brief morning recess, Scully is back on the stand and it is the defense attorney’s chance to cross-examine Scully.

Judd Wilkinson, Jerse’s privately retained defense attorney, is tall and imposing; he’d spoken and objected little during Venegas’s direct examination, busy taking notes on his legal pad and studying Scully intently during direct.  

At points during Scully’s testimony, Jerse had leaned over to whisper into Wilkinson’s ear, gesturing wildly as far as he was able to with his hands still cuffed to his chair.

When Wilkinson finally stands up, he cuts an imposing figure in the courtroom.  Broad shoulders, a slight paunch he covers with a navy double-breasted suit, slicked-back jet-black hair and piercing blue eyes.

“Agent Scully, I’m going to show you a series of photos that have been premarked as Court’s exhibits one through five and I’d like you to take a moment and look over them for me.  Just look up when you’re done, alright?” Wilkinson says, and he ambles up to the witness stand and hands a stack of photos to Scully.

Mulder notices that Scully’s eyes darken as she flips through them, and her nostrils flare slightly.  By the time she’s done, two flaming spots of color have appeared on her cheeks.  

“Have you had a chance to review those photographs, Agent Scully?” Wilkinson drawls, rocking back on his heels and linking his hands behind his back.

“Yes.”

“Do you recognize what you see in those exhibits?”

“Yes.”

“What do those photos depict, if you don’t mind telling the court?”

“Injuries I sustained at the hand of the defendant.”

Wilkinson suddenly stops the slow swaying he’s been doing and he tilts his head to zero in on Scully.  “Well, now, Agent Scully, are you certain that those photos depict _injuries_ you sustained at the hands of my client?  Doesn’t Exhibit 1 show bite marks on your neck?”

Mulder watches Scully blink slowly at Wilkinson.  “Yes.”

“Was that an injury, Agent Scully, or was that a love bite?”

Venegas almost catapults out of her chair and leans over her table.  “Objection, your Honor, argumentative as phrased, vague as to ‘love bite’.”

The magistrate looks over his glasses at Wilkinson, raising a bushy eyebrow at him before turning to Scully.  “Did you understand the question, Agent Scully?”

Scully’s jaw clenches visibly before she responds.  “Yes, your Honor.”

“Then you may answer.  But tread lightly, Mr. Wilkinson,” the magistrate warns.  “I don’t think I like where this line of questioning is going.”

“Understood, your Honor,” Wilkinson smiles through large, square teeth.  “Please answer the question, Ms. Scully.”

“Those bite marks were the result of our consensual sexual encounter the night before the assault,” Scully says tightly.

“And what about the bruises on your back pictured in Exhibit 2?”

“Well, that depends, Mr. Wilkinson,” Scully responds icily.  “If you’re talking about the finger-shaped bruises on my lower back, those were also the result of our sexual encounter.  But if you’re talking about the bruising along the T-10 and T-11 vertebrae, then no, those were the result of your client throwing me against a wall.”

Mulder has to quell the urge to stand up and cheer.  

Undeterred, Wilkinson crosses his arms and starts pacing behind the podium.  

“And what about the bruising and the scratches that we see depicted in Exhibit 3, Agent Scully?”

Glancing down at the photo, Scully lifts her head up and answers again in a clear, tremorless voice.  “The bruising and scratching on my thighs and buttocks were from our failed attempt to engage in intercourse.  The rest of the injuries pictured in that exhibit were the result of our physical altercation the following morning.”

“And how do we know, Agent Scully, that your ‘attempts to engage in sexual intercourse’ didn’t continue that following morning?”

Venegas stands again.  “Objection, that’s argumentative as phrased, your Honor!”

“Your Honor, I fail to see how I can determine exactly when this consensual sexual encounter, which was already apparently consensually painful and resulted in physical demarcations that Agent Scully obviously had no problem with when they were inflicted upon her, stopped being consensual unless I follow this line of questioning,” Wilkinson said, his voice smooth as molasses.

“Probably right about the time the defendant threw her up against a wall and she lost consciousness, Judd!” Venegas practically shouts.

“COUNSEL!” the magistrate yells, staring down at the two of them sternly.  “Sidebar, both of you.”

Venegas crosses her arms and brushes past Wilkinson, who gestures grandly with an ‘after you’ sweep of his arm before following her to the magistrate’s dais.  The judge bends down and the three have an animated conversation in hushed tones and sharp whispers.  Venegas pinches the bridge of her nose over her glasses and glares up at Wilkinson, whose smug smile has started to widen as the conversation progresses.

Eventually, the two attorneys retreat from the magistrate and resume their position, Venegas sinking into her chair and Wilkinson returning to the podium.

“Now, Agent Scully,” Wilkinson continues, “you say that by the morning after your encounter with my client, you already had sustained quite a few bites and bruises, is that right?”

“Yes.”  The slight bob of Scully’s throat as she swallows is the only indication Mulder can see that she’s uncomfortable.  

“And you didn’t mind _those_ bites and bruises when they were being inflicted upon you, did you?”

“I didn’t know until the next morning that the defendant had left contusions.”

Wilkinson smiles broadly.  “You didn’t answer my question, Agent Scully.”

Scully closes her eyes for a moment, sighing audibly.  “I’m sorry, what was your question?”

“I said, you didn’t _mind_ those bites and bruises, did you?”

“No.”

Wilkinson waves hand through the air and gestures between Scully and Jerse as he asks the next question.  “In fact, Agent Scully, didn’t you, at one point, tell my client during your consensual encounter to ‘make it hurt’?”

The furious blush that Scully has been maintaining throughout cross-examination drains rapidly from her face, leaving her shockingly pallid.  The air leaves her lungs and her gasp is amplified by the microphone so that it echoes in the courtroom.

Mulder silently begs Venegas to object, but Venegas just licks her lips and looks down at her table.  Their sidebar must have gone worse than he’d thought.

Scully’s breathing is labored now.  She sways slightly in her seat.  “W-What?”

Wilkinson smiles again, and looks at Scully with all the innocence and charm of a snack-oil salesman.  “Did you or did you not tell my client, Agent Scully, to ‘make it hurt so I know you’re not him’?”

Black spots swim before Mulder’s eyes as his heartbeat skids out of control and when it restarts it seems to be beating at triple time.  He vaguely realizes that he’s hyperventilating.  A fine sheen of sweat has broken out over his face and neck, but conversely a chill shudders through him.

Scully’s lips open and close wordlessly for a moment before she gulps and responds.  “I- I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember,” Wilkinson repeats slowly.  “Well, when exactly did the _pain_ stop being consensual, Agent Scully?”

Scully’s eyes dart to Mulder’s, and he lifts a shoulder, trying to belie the naked astonishment that he knows must be written all over his face.  He shouldn’t be surprised; he’s a trained profiler.  He reads people for a living, has learned to see past the constructs and facades that they erect for one reason or another.  He’s adept at breaking them down to study the cracks and demons hidden within their foundations.  

For reasons he’s tried not to examine too closely, he had stopped himself from doing the same thing to Scully, in part because he’d needed to believe that she was the capable, detached hardass of an equal she’d projected herself to be.  He knew if he didn’t take her at face value, his twisted psyche would somehow find a way to make her a surrogate for Samantha.  Another kid sister.  

Lucky for him, Dana Scully was all of those things she projected: Capable.  Efficient.  The equal he’d been waiting for.  

He had always figured that when it came to the tightly-wound woman underneath the Kevlar, the woman who’d gradually been pared down to the essentials of herself since being partnered with him, she’d need to lose a certain amount of control in the bedroom.  But that was another thing he’d tried not to think about, for obvious reasons.  Scully in the bedroom was not a place he needed to be thinking about her.

But, Jesus, he’s never dreamed that she’d flirt with masochism so brazenly; that the line between pain and pleasure would all but disappear for her.  

And then this…this encounter with Jerse and how it had come on the heels of their argument in the office.  

_I wish I could say that we were going in circles, but we’re not. We’re going in an endless line - - two steps forwards and three steps back. While my own life is…standing still._

How he’d voiced his disapproval of the way she’d handled the Pudovkin case.  How angry he’d been, how he’d scolded her over the phone.  

_What, you don’t think I’m capable?_

Mulder starts and his breath hitches when the pieces of the puzzle click into place, like the last few twists of Rubick’s cube.  

_I’ve always gone around in this, uh…this circle. It usually starts when an authoritative or controlling figure comes into my life. And part of me likes it, needs it, wants the approval. But then at a certain point, along the way, I just, you know…_

Mulder looks up at his partner, pale but strong on the witness stand, and remembers where she came from. Her Navy captain father, who had been loving but had no doubt run his household like a battleship, doling out stern words and corporal punishment; her strict Catholic upbringing that had included knuckles rapped bloody with a yardstick; how she had continued to wear the remnants of the plaid uniforms of her grade school days, even as an adult, in the shapeless, boxy suits that she’d just recently started to leave behind, right around the same time she’d stopped going to mass.  How pain must have become synonymous with punishment.

When she’d slept with Jerse, she hadn’t just been punishing herself, she’d been lashing out at him.  Reminding him, reminding herself, that she wasn’t a moon orbiting him, lost forever in his gravitational pull.  She was her own person. 

Scully pulls her shoulders back a few notches, lifts her exquisite jaw.  Some color has returned to her, though she’s still a shade too pale.  But the audacity of Wilkinson’s line of questioning has fortified her.    

“Since you seem to be having trouble understanding this, Mr. Wilkinson, let me make it perfectly clear for you.  At no time did I consent to the defendant’s actions the morning after our consensual encounter.  Any time he touched me after I’d woken up that day, he did so against my will, and I believe with the intent to harm me, or kill me.”

The smile disappears from Wilkinson’s jowly face, and he returns to his table and grabs his notepad before circling back around to the podium.  Mulder is weak with relief when Wilkinson moves to his next set of questions.

“Agent Scully, isn’t it true that you believed my client to be acting under the influence of a toxin known as ergot, which is known to cause auditory hallucinations and even psychosis?”

“Objection, your Honor,” Venegas speaks for the first time in what feels like hours.  “Total lack of foundation at this point for this line of questioning.  Agent Scully’s qualifications as an expert as pertain to the defendant’s reaction to this alleged toxin have not been established.”

“Sustained,” the magistrate nods.  “Next question, Mr. Wilkinson.”

Wilkinson looks like he wants to belabor the point, but Mulder knows it’s a losing battle.

“Isn’t it true, Agent Scully, that rather than inflict further harm upon you down in the basement, my client stuck his own arm inside the incinerator of his building?”

Venegas stands again.  “Objection, calls for speculation as to defendant’s intent and frame of mind.”

“Sustained,” the magistrate agrees.

Wilkinson tries one last time.  “Well, didn’t he have the opportunity to inflict further harm upon you, Agent Scully, and instead he chose to inflict harm upon himself?”

Scully answers before Venegas is able to object again.  “He could have killed me.  I believe he would have.  I don’t know what made him stop.”

Tapping his finger to his chin, Wilkinson leans over from the podium and whispers into Jerse’s ear.  Jerse shakes his head and looks down at the table.

“I have no further questions at this time, your Honor.”  And with that, Wilkinson sits back down.

Scully looks at Venegas, who stands and says, “No redirect, your Honor.”

The magistrate peers down at Scully and says, “You’re free to go.  Thank you, Agent Scully.  Ms. Venegas, please call your next witness.”

Looking like she’s about to wilt with relief, Scully stands and takes a shaky breath.  She steps down from the stand and walks past Jerse, who follows her with his eyes.  Mulder thinks he hears Jerse say softly, “I’m sorry, Dana”, but he can’t be sure.  And he doesn’t care.

His focus is on the woman who is striding past the bar.  She pauses long enough for Mulder to stand, and he murmurs into her ear as he opens the courtroom door for her, “You did a good job, Scully.”

Scully ducks under his arm and looks up at him as they walk down the hallway.  “Take me home, Mulder.”

He hesitates only a moment before letting his hand settle softly into the sway of her lower back, the place she’s reminded him is only his because she allows it to be.  Mulder releases a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding when she leans into him.  

As they walk out of the courthouse and into the sunlight, he adds the slightest bit of pressure, curving his fingers around her so that he can feel the dip of her waist and she can feel the weight of his hand.  Her hand covers his as he touches her gently.  

Reverently.  

Softly. 

So she knows it’s him.


End file.
